News

As Curt Peterson, professor of geology, surveyed the reach of the tsunami that hit the coast of southeast India, he couldn’t help but compare it to the geological deposits he’s observed on the Oregon coast. He has seen sand deposits—the telltale signs of a long-ago tsunami—three times as far inland as those in India. With the loss of life and property so great in India, the possible threat to Oregon’s coastal communities took on new meaning.

Peterson was part of an international team of scientists allowed into India just a week after the tsunami disaster. They investigated the tsunami’s dynamics and resulting flooding, comparing it to computer models of possible tsunami paths in the Pacific Northwest.

The scientists found that while the height of the waves rose only 9 to 12 feet above mean tide level, it proved devastating to the residents who had built homes and businesses just a couple feet above sea level. Buildings imploded and the resulting debris was deadly. Standing water from the floods—reaching distances of 600 feet from the beach—were fatal to some children.

The kind of earthquake that occurred in December always produces a tsunami, says Peterson. However, the very word, tsunami, was unfamiliar to the people of India and most of its officials. Its warning signs—a subduction zone earthquake in Sumatra and receding ocean levels in India two hours later—went unheeded, he says.

“We and the Japanese are partly to blame. We could have brought this information to them about the hazard and how to prepare for evacuation, but we didn’t,” says Peterson.

The massive quake that caused the tsunami came from oceanic plates similar in geology to those off the Washington, Oregon, and northern California coasts, says Peterson, adding that the devastation of Indonesia’s coast, which was harder hit than India’s, is a better example of what could happen to Oregon’s coastal communities.